


As the Years Go By

by LoveChilde



Category: Power Rangers Ninja Storm
Genre: Bikes, Both pretty mild though, Cars, Child Neglect, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2158680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveChilde/pseuds/LoveChilde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In fourth grade, Dustin and Shane become friends. Each has something the other is missing. Together, they fix things up- machines, as well as each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As the Years Go By

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tptigger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tptigger/gifts).



> Tptigger wanted anything involving the lives of the Ninja storm kids outside of Ranger-hood, before or after they become Rangers. Well, this is both, so I hope it works for you :-)
> 
> Beta by [SailorSol](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol) and [Ishouldbewriting](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishouldbewriting), title from the Randy Newman song 'You've Got A Friend In Me', suggested by SailorSol.

Shane is the first person who sees Dustin, and sees more in him that anybody else does. 

In fourth grade, Shane is the most popular kid in class. He has good grades, and parents that went to every PTA meeting and never have screaming fights in front of a teacher during parent-teacher conferences while their son tries to disappear into the floor. Everybody likes Shane. 

In fourth grade, nobody knows Dustin. Everybody knows Waldo, though, or at least knows _of_ Waldo, who gets detention almost every day because he just can’t sit still, and gets in trouble with older kids all the time (nobody knows that he gets detention on purpose some days, when it’s better than going home). Waldo has parents who fight and throw things and ignore him; sometimes he thinks that his parents named him Waldo, because they knew he’d develop a habit of hiding somewhere in the house or outside when they fought, until someone comes looking for him. In fourth grade, Waldo decides to become Dustin. His parents are finally getting a divorce, and his dad’s moving far, far away. Now he can start over, and not be ‘the kid with the parents who fight’ anymore. Sure, he’ll be Dustin, who only has his mom around and barely even that, but nobody’d ever mockingly ask ‘where’s Dustin’, as they ask about Waldo- they’d all already know.

It’s a stroke of luck, then, that Shane decides that Dustin is much better than Waldo. When he starts using the new name, the other kids fall in line with minimal mockery, until even the teachers start calling him Dustin when they call attendance. As soon as he can ask people over safely, as soon as Waldo’s dad leaves, Dustin starts inviting Shane over. 

(It takes him more than four years after the divorce to admit that Waldo’s dad and Dustin’s dad are the same person, and to agree to see his father when he comes to visit. When he’s fifteen, Dustin even goes to visit him for a week in summer.) 

***

Dustin’s probably the luckiest kid in town, in Shane’s eyes. Shane loves hanging out at Dustin’s, where his mother’s never home, and Dustin’s allowed to watch TV as soon as he gets back from school, and soda isn’t only for weekends, and he can pretty much do whatever he likes. At first, his parents wouldn’t let him go to Dustin’s, and really, Dustin never invited him over before the middle of fifth grade, even though they started to be friends the year before. Shane knew that something bad had happened between Dustin’s parents, and one day he overheard his mom telling his dad that it was alright to send him over to the Brooks house, now that Mr. Brooks was gone. Dustin never said anything about his dad not being around anymore, and Shane never asks because he’s pretty sure asking would make Dustin sad. Dustin’s the most cheerful kid Shane knows, and he doesn’t want to ruin that. 

So, three days a week at least, he ends up at Dustin’s after school. Most of the time, they just hang out and watch TV, because Dustin’s mom works late. Sometimes she leaves food for Dustin to heat up, sometimes she leaves money for pizza, and sometimes she doesn’t do either, and Shane likes those days best, because those are the days that Dustin cooks. Shane doesn’t know anybody else in their class who can cook, not even the girls, and the fact that Dustin can makes him extra-special and extra lucky, in Shane’s eyes. He looks forward to seeing Dustin scramble eggs, slice up vegetables for a salad, or boil water for pasta. Even sandwiches seem cooler, when they make them on their own. At home, Shane’s mom won’t let him near the stove yet, and Parker laughs at him when he wants to help in the kitchen; at Dustin’s he can help with the knives and once they even make cookies together. They come out lopsided and a little burned, but Mrs. Brooks seems so happy when they proudly present her with a tray full of cookies, that she even lets them off cleaning up the mess they left in the kitchen. 

When Shane gives his own mother a few cookies on a paper plate he carried over from Dustin’s, she thanks him without looking at them, and leaves them untouched on the counter until Parker gets to them all. Parker never even bothers to thank him.

Dustin doesn’t really like cooking that much, but it’s cook or go hungry, some days, and he likes being hungry even less. He only likes cooking when Shane’s there to share with him. 

***

Shane is the main reason that Dustin gets any homework done, in the fifth grade and after; Shane knows that if his grades drop, he wouldn’t be allowed to hang out with Dustin anymore, so he forces them both to do homework, after they’re done watching the afternoon TV. Shane is the first person who encourages Dustin to work out math while running around the room, and scribble words and dates on posters they both hang on the walls of Dustin’s room. Dustin knows that Shane is way smarter than him, and can sit still and read a book and remember what was in it, while all the words and images get scrambled in Dustin’s head and fly away, but around Shane, he doesn’t feel stupid. 

Dustin is the only person that Shane can feel smart with. At home, he’s never good enough; his parents expect perfection, and Shane rarely manages to deliver. At school, all the teachers seem to remember is how much brighter Parker was, when he was Shane’s age, and what a shame Shane can’t do as well as his brother. Parker himself, of course, has no time or patience to help Shane with homework. With Dustin, Shane has to slow down a little and read through explanations twice, for the both of them. He knows it’s mean to feel good when he solves a math problem first, or gets a better grade, but he never mocks Dustin, and Dustin always looks up to him and tells him how smart he is. He’s the only person who ever does.

***

Dustin wants a motorbike more than anything in the world. He knows he can’t get a license for one yet, but he’s ten now, and he figures, if he gets a paper route and saves up all the pocket money and birthday money he gets, and gets a summer job if he can, he’ll have enough saved up in five and a half years to at least buy a second-hand bike, to go with the permit he hopes to get as soon as he can legally do it. In the meantime, he doesn’t even have a regular bike, and he knows his mom can’t afford to buy him one. 

Shane and Dustin take turns on Shane’s shiny new skateboard, bought by his parents as a reward for good grades. Shane loves his skateboard more than almost anything, and takes stupid risks with it just because he can, skating over rails and down stairs. Dustin keeps his turns short, because he can see how much Shane wants to go again any time it’s Dustin’s turn. He also gets into the habit of carrying around Band-Aids and gauze and disinfectant, for when Shane inevitably falls or crashes, and his parents can’t ever know, because they’ll take the board away. Shane says that as long as he’s not actively bleeding, nobody’ll notice if he’s bruised or scratched, and so by the end of fifth grade, Dustin gets quite good at patching him up. 

“You can fix it. Patch it up like you patch me up.” Shane says when they come across a bike lying abandoned in a yard, some distance away from both their homes. And then, “Come on, I’ll help.”

It’s the first week of summer vacation, between fifth grade and sixth, and for the first time since kindergarten Dustin doesn’t have any remedial summer classes he needs to take. The days are long and hot and they both have too much time on their hands, so fixing up a bike seems like the best idea ever. They drag the battered old structure home, lacking wheels and a seat, and set out to turn it into a functional bike. 

It takes them all summer. First, Dustin digs up a tool box left behind when Waldo’s dad left. They’re both clumsy with the tools at first, but Shane talks Parker into helping them, one afternoon when the older boy needs a break from whatever mysterious things boys do when they’re about to become high school seniors. With Parker’s help they learn how to twist metal back into shape, reinforce screws and glue things back into place (Parker forbids them to try welding anything, and for once Shane thinks he may be right). 

They spend days and days working on the bike, or roaming around the town, looking for spare parts. Tires are the only thing Dustin agrees to buy, because he wants them to last; he considers it an investment, because a bike will let him have a paper route, and he figures he’ll earn back the cost of tires in a few months at most. The bike, when they finish, is a patchwork of older and newer parts, with mismatched colors and handlebars that still threaten to detach if Dustin takes a turn too sharply, but they work. 

For the last week or so of vacation they race, skateboard against bike. Dustin usually wins, but not always. He wants to try tricks on his bike, but is too afraid to wreck it. On the first week of sixth grade, he starts a paper route, morning and evening. His first week’s pay buys ice cream for the two of them, after school, as they once again go to Dustin’s place to hang out. 

Dustin rides that bike until he outgrows it, and keeps it in his mom’s garage afterwards. He gets a new bike to learn tricks on, forcing Shane to learn some first aid as well. By the time Dustin graduates to his own motorbike, they’re both pretty good at patching each other up. 

***  
Shane has a fight with Parker, the week before Parker leaves for college. It ends with slammed doors, a punch thrown, and Shane being grounded for two weeks. It starts like this: 

“Are you still hanging out with that charity case kid? Rusty, Dusty, whatever his name was?”

Shane’s home in the afternoon, because it’s the summer between sixth and seventh grades, and Dustin and his mom are away on vacation for a week, for the first time ever, probably. He raises his eyes to glare at Parker, “Dustin’s not a charity case.”

“Are you kidding? His mom works two jobs, he barely scrapes through at school, rides that trashy bike- the only reason mom and dad even let you hang out with him is because they think it’s character-forming for you to mentor the less fortunate.”

“You’re lying. You take that back.” Shane’s on his feet now, eyes blazing, fury rising in him like a tide. “Dustin’s my best friend- and he’s smarter than people think- and- and you’re lying! It’s not like that!” 

“You keep telling yourself that, Shane, until that kid drags you down into whatever mess he gets into, when he’s older. I’ve seen his type, little brother, they never end up any good. Better dump him while you can, before he screws you over.”

Shane’s never been able to win a verbal argument with Parker, and loses most physical fights as well, but he launches himself at his brother anyway. He has no words to describe how much Dustin’s taught him, how much their friendship is the best part of Shane’s life and how lost he’d be without it, so instead he just punches Parker in the face and storms out. His parents call it disgraceful, Parker sneers and wipes the blood away from his mouth, and Shane is stuck at home until a week after Dustin returns from vacation, heartsick and bored and miserable.

He’s so elated when he can leave the house again and go back to Dustin, to his skateboard, to long days spent just roaming or going to the beach or hanging out at the mall, that he completely forgets, for a while, what Parker said. The memory resurfaces sometimes, when his parents give him a hard time about grades again, when he stays out late at the skate park, when he’s never good enough for them, but they never suggest that Dustin’s holding him back. Sometimes he guesses they allow them to stay friends because they think his character hasn’t been formed enough yet. On those occasions, he makes a point of acting out, and then mentioning that Dustin’s keeping him focused. It seems to work.

When Shane joins the Wind Ninja Academy straight out of high school, his parents are surprised, but cautiously optimistic; after all, martial arts training requires discipline which will be useful later. Shane doesn’t tell them that it’s something he decided to do with Dustin and Tori, who’d joined their little group towards the end of seventh grade, just to see if they could make it as ninjas, because it was cool. ‘Cool’ is not a career choice. They’d never understand.

***

Dustin is the only one of them who doesn’t move into the teachers’ quarters at the Academy, after it all ends and they become Masters and teachers. He doesn’t want his mom to be alone, now that he can actually be with her; besides, it’s been a rough year for everyone, and he wants to see if he can get back to anything like a normal life before committing to the ninja way for the foreseeable future.

It’s also the year he changes his name legally. He doesn’t want to forget Waldo, but he doesn’t feel like that kid anymore, and can’t go back to being him. Dustin’s present is much nicer than Waldo’s past, and he has a better chance at a future, too. Dustin chooses to look to the future. 

Shane moves out as soon as he can. Teaching martial arts is only marginally better than skating, as career choices go, and even with Parker’s support, life at home becomes more and more strained, and since he can leave, he does. 

None of them cope well with getting back to normal. Cam goes off to university, and Tori moves in with Blake, and they both leave Dustin and Shane to muddle through somehow, when even they don’t understand how they’ve all changed, while they were Rangers, and can’t really expect anyone around them to understand it. They’re surrounded by people who only remember who they were, and few even try to see who they’ve become. It’s not easy. 

Teachers’ quarters are cramped and Spartan, but they’re private, and Shane is treated with respect by most students, and some of the teachers. Others still remember the clumsy, raw student he had been, but he tries not to let that bother him. He has saved them all, him and the team; he doesn’t need their blind approval, and is willing to prove himself worthy again, if he has to. But the weight of experience, of the year the other teachers spent in captivity while Shane’s world was turned on its head several times over, the knowledge that he risked his life again and again, wielding immense power while they were helpless, shades every interaction and makes socializing awkward, at first. So he falls back into old habits.

Dustin’s mom still works two jobs, and his house is still usually empty when he comes home from the Academy. Shane doesn’t wait for an invitation and doesn’t need one; he just drops by, or falls into step next to Dustin at the end of the day, instead of heading to his own room, no questions asked, knowing he’ll be welcomed and that there are always pop-tarts in the freezer for him. Knowing that he can get away someplace safe, when days get too long and dull and frustrating, means more to him than he can say. 

Dustin keeps the freezer stocked with pop-tarts, even though he doesn’t eat them anymore, because Shane likes them. He likes teaching better than Shane does, but the fact that he leaves the Academy every day, and hits the motocross track five days a week, helps as well. Dustin has a life, and being a ninja is only part of this life- and a part that he isn’t sure will last much longer. 

One Saturday, after morning classes, Shane heads to Dustin’s. Teaching the oldest students is always harder for him, because some of them are his age or older, and he has a hard time making them listen to him. They all look so _young_ and carefree, even the ones who’re several years older than Shane. He’s torn between being wildly jealous of their calm and normal lives, and screaming at them that none of them are ready, if someone like Lothor tries to invade again, and he’s only trying to prepare them, so they wouldn’t go through what he’d had to. It’s exhausting, and he’s deep in his own thoughts, barely watching where he’s going, so that he almost doesn’t notice the battered hull of an ancient car in the yard and nearly walks right into it. 

Dustin stands next to the car- more like a wreck, if Shane’s honest about it- and grins like a loon.

“Look what I found! Think we’re ready to graduate from bikes and boards to a four-wheel classic? We can fix her up like we did my old bike, it’ll be fun!”

Shane looks at the rickety pile of metal and wood and plastic for a long while. Then he looks at his best friend, who’s still grinning, stroking the old metal parts. Slowly, he smiles as well. “It’ll be a patch-up job.”

“We’re good at those.” Dustin points out, and Shane has to concede that yes, they are. 

“It’ll take a long time.”

“Got anything better to do?”

“I guess...” Shane hesitates, studying the car again, “It could be fun.”

“ _Will_ be fun.”

“I’ll get the toolbox.” 

They exchange grins, and for a moment they’re both ten again. There are no ninjas, no Rangers, no Lothor and no horror in their lives; nothing that can’t be made better by fixing up a car together. They’re good at patch-up jobs.


End file.
